Dec 23, 2007
Three Autumn Trees in Hoyt Arboretum.
I have grand hopes of learning to document my work over break so I can get my portfolio together. By the time I get around to applying to 4 year programs I will be under the wire as the deadlines go. Anyways it seemed really simple at school when people were helping me, AKA doing it for me! I have a tripod and a level and I seem to think that it should be easy now. Not really, I took his picture before I got lights so we'll see what happens when I get those set up.
I haven't named this painting yet. I painted it from sketches I made at the Arboretum, though I did not stay true to the landscape exactly. My painting teacher feels that this is the least resolved of my pieces and while I think it is the most static I really can't figure out what else to do to it without completely repainting it. I love trees and color so I guess I don't mind having a static but colorful painting of some very beautiful trees. Hopefully I will outgrow static.
Dec 18, 2007
Oatmeal: the Movie.
I am now officially on Winter break, finals week was rough but I did well and I am very happy to report that I am finished with my college math career! Painting finals are a whole different story. We don't take tests. We aren't forced to paint a still life in 2 hours to prove our skill. We have a critique. Everyone puts all their work up from the quarter and we disscuss as a group what works and doesn't work about each piece. They are extremely educational but somewhat dissapointing in that, inevitably, there are pieces I think are finished that aren't. I have three such paintings. Patience is the hardest part of being an artist so far.
Anyways, like I said, I'm on break. Although I have been running around trying to gather lights, velvet and camera gear to take slides of my work, and lumber and tools to frame work, I am actually trying to relax too. One thing I find really important is to play creatively like I did before I had any notion of making art a career. Oatmeal: the Movie. is just that sort of endeavor. My sister and her husband thoughtfully gave me their digital camera after they upgraded. It's far superior to the one I had and it makes movies! I have no idea why this film is so funny to me. I know nothing about film making and it is really hard to film what you are doing when what you are doing you would normally do with two hands. I like it anyways.
Dec 5, 2007
The End of Math and Other Post-Flu Stories.
Nov 15, 2007
Coming to Terms with the Postmodern Age.
As you well know an artist can get away with anything these days. We keep trying to get away with more because everything has already been done and it has been done with incredible skill and beauty. I have had a profound dislike of minimalist art, DADA, and postmodern art for some time and am slowly learning to appreciate and even adore some of it.
It all started with Mondrian. I had to do a report on him for a design class. He had this Grey Tree painting that I loved and as I learned about the spiritual pursuit underlying his art I began to think it wasn't so pretentious. Then I watched a video about him, as they panned the camera through a gallery of his work I could feel the resonance not available in printed reproductions. Later I went to visit the minimalist art wing in the Portland Art Museum and discovered it was my favorite wing, all the pieces had a profound resonance. Agnes Martin made no sense to me in a book, but standing in front of her work I found it indescribably beautiful. I have heard from many people that they did not like Pollock until they saw his work in person, now they love it!
I still have trouble with the Postmodern and DADA aesthetic but after reading about the context they were born out of I can finally appreciate them as important movements. DADA being a reaction to the senselessness of war, the initial impulse to make art without reason or rules is inspiring but the destructive attitude that went along with the movement really puts me off. They wanted to obliterate everything previously held sacred or revered. While it's certainly worthwhile to deconstruct cultural assumptions the bitterness is hard to find attractive as an artistic aesthetic. I have only learned a little about it yet and may change my mind. These days it seems much of the art out there is either a dry imitation of something else, a forced attempt to do something unique for its own sake, or its very conceptual. So far I am not very drawn to conceptual art but my continuing education may change my mind on that, too.
The above picture is one of my first attempts at abstracting from an observed subject, the Columbia river. This painting at right is a small canvas I painted after looking at Paul Klee's work. I was using it as a warm up to try to get in a less structured spirit before I began work on another painting. I think I will continue to paint over it as a warm-up improvisation.
Nov 9, 2007
Soft. (book arts)
I decided to post this piece tonight because I was just out sketching trees. Afterward I went for a hike and I felt as if all the trees were being especially alluring in their windy branches and stark dusk light. It was as if they all wanted desperately to be drawn! Of course, I know this isn't true. They have been fine forever without any portraits and they will continue to be more content than I can imagine without my attention. So, I thought of this poem.
Nov 7, 2007
The Denial of Little P's Flight. (Intaglio)
The main change I want to make is to lighten the bird up in the left part of the tree. You probably didn't see it did you, see what I mean? The title, The Denial of Little P's Flight is just a working title for now. The piece is about how we sometimes would rather deny the wrongdoings of someone important to us than to make them uncomfortable. We can also deny out own wrongdoings just to "save face" in the world. I don't know if I've conveyed that or not.
The other two pieces feel at a standstill to me
and I'm tempted to abandon them and move on to new plates. Sometimes when I try to correct a mistake it causes ten new ones. It's not easy to let go of a piece I put a lot of time into but I think it might be good to apply what I've learned to a new plate instead of struggling with an old one.
Nov 5, 2007
Fertile Paper.
I love all the inconsistencies, the one piece of blue lint or the wrinkle, the misshapen corner. They seem to have more character then the few pieces that turn out more perfect. Now I need to test them out to see what mediums can be used on them . I did use some sizing but its difficult to get enough in and not too much. Very scientific and since I am more interested in making new papers I rarely get a chance to perfect the science part. I think my paper had become boring then anyways, less inconsistencies.
Nov 3, 2007
The Virility of Paper 2.
I love the way paper looks when it is hanging up to dry and I have to admit I think its more beautiful wet then it is dry.
Nov 1, 2007
Works In Progress
Oct 30, 2007
The Virility of Paper
Oct 29, 2007
Mathmatics of Branches.
Later in the day while I was on my way to Algebra, thinking that I would get there early and catch up on logarithms, I stopped to sit on a stone bench out behind the cafeteria. There were such beautiful trees I had to get out my sketch book. What I loved most was the brilliant yellow of back-lit leaves glowing between evergreen trunks in the distance. I tried to be loose and found that, as I suspected, drawing is way more fulfilling when the drawer is relaxed. It was tempting to skip math but I left for class anyways and found that everywhere I looked there was a beautiful composition waiting to be painted! It's almost overwhelming. I felt very quiet and tree-like in the midst of all that beauty and remembered why I love trees so much. They are so strong and so yielding. They do not try to make their branches grow in any particular way, they do not spend thirty years deciding what kind of tree they want to be only to have a mid-life crisis ten years later when they realize, "I was just never meant to be a birch, I 'm an oak after all!"
Oct 28, 2007
Sketching Trees
Oct 26, 2007
They Give Like Sighs. (Intaglio)
I spent hours writing them on tracing paper then spent hours tracing them backwards onto the softground and then I etched my plate too long! The acid broke through the ground and I lost half the letters. I started over, writing the letters on tracing paper...this time I decided to line etch them so I could leave them in the acid longer without worrying about the ground breaking down. I transferred the letters from the tracing paper onto the asphaltum ground by running them through the press. I then spent hours carving the letters out before I etched them again. The letters came out this time but they were so much darker than the softground trees I decided to use drypoint to bring the trees back out. When the plate was finally "done" I was disappointed in the upper branches and am considering cutting the plate down and re-editioning it.
Oct 25, 2007
A Brief Exploration of Pastles.
"A broken heart ain't nothin' more than a poem, another excuse to stand infront of the world to say, 'I love you! And it hurts when you don't love me back!'"
Oct 23, 2007
The Geology of Being.
"Any Morning." (Book Arts)
for William Stafford's poem, "Any Morning." In Western binding methods the folds of the paper are generally nested together and sewn or glued into the spine. In this traditional Japanese binding style the folds of the pages are on the outside of the book. For this rendition of "Any Morning" I selected one word from each page and wrote it under the text in blue gouache, across the fold and onto the backside of the page. The calligraphic hand is Uncial, widely used in the middle ages.
William Stafford was the Poet Laureate of Oregon in his day and still widely acclaimed. This is one of my favorite poems.
Oct 22, 2007
Leaving.
This is one of the first books I made out of handmade paper. The process occupied almost every square foot of my small living room and kitchen. The binding is actually embedded into the pages. It was really challenging trying to keep track of which string went where and I was pleasantly surprised when it all worked out. I left the binding threads hanging, long out of the sides of the pages because I thought it gave the book a more earth feel and the reader has to participate more to turn the pages, sweeping the strings out of the way. The text reads:
Leaving.
I would like to blow away with the
leaves today.
Surely some of them make it all the
way to Santa Fe.
There they catch in sagebrush with
local cotton wood leaves
to rest forever under snow and bright blue skies.
I would like to rest forever!
I would like to ride the wind and change colors.
I would like to fray and melt back into the earth.
I would like to mingle with stones and worms.,
to sink back to roots and feed new green leaves
who have yet to paint themselves and dance across city sidewalks.
What joy there is in sadness!
Those old leaves rattling about on the street
sing the meanest, low-downest blues I've ever heard.
But they feel no pain
even stuck in gutters and drain grating, soggy and forlorn.
They sing their blues for us.
They dance around our feet
lamenting the lives of such big, tall creatures
who never paint themselves red
or dance on the wind.
Oct 21, 2007
Painting Trees in the Arboretum
Oct 20, 2007
Shadow and Fern.(Intaglio)
Oct 19, 2007
Separate. (Book Arts)
This is a book I created for my friend Loie as an illustration of the poem below. I was enamored with the idea of a book that had many compartments, pockets and folding surfaces. The above picture is the last, inside page because I have not yet developed lay-out skills in this program!
Separate.
There's a man in my window, It's only my reflection without my face.
I've just come from the arboretum
where wind sculpted light across the sky
on the bellies of clouds.
I just lay in the arboretum
where trees drew inky, angular lines across the sky,
some flaming in the iridescent glory
of blood becoming light.
I just made love to the sky,
the wind coddling my cheek,
each pore receiving rain in the delighted giggles
and shudders of virgin nerves.
Here my chin, there my brow,
now my lip, then my nose.
I turn to the days melt along the horizon
where orange and crimson undulate
in the grey sea of twilight.
I stand to see more and wander home
until the sky of paint pulls me from the trail.
The pain of seeing only dark,
formlessness within collapses,
a pile of joints and bones and skin
at the crest of a needle-strewn hill.
I'll leave all my dreams here,
take my last walk off this hill,
if I could just tuck the colors in my pocket
and hold the light inside.